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Re: Identity crisis!
Both store's employees sound like typical pet store employees that really don't know as much as they'd like you to believe that they know.
I feed all of mine live, even hatchlings. Live rats, not stunned or knocked out. I've never had one injured - and I even feed off retired breeder rats to my largest breeder females.
I was fed the line "females are more valuable to breeders than males, so there are not females in the pet trade" line by a small mom/pop store near me, yet he has females (he doesn't know how to sex, and for the longest would not allow me to sex them, because I'd "sterilize" them by sexing them - funny how I haven't sterilized any of my breeders! LOL).
Most breeders aren't keeping female normals, because they're replacing them with morph females. Most of us will wholesale our normals to pet stores, males and females.
That is extremely light if her age is correct, though I'm not sure how Petco knows what the age is, considering their supply are captive hatched animals imported from Africa, and not supplied by local breeders. They cost Petco less than $10 a head.
Feed what you're comfortable feeding, but don't be scared off by the horror stories of feeding live. Most of the pictures you've seen are a result of an irresponsible keeper putting live prey in with their snakes for days, with no food or water for the rodent, so they eat the only thing available to them - the snake, if the snake has refused to eat them.
I've fed off over 15K live prey - mice, rats - none of mine have been maimed or killed by their food. If I felt that my collection was in jeopardy by feeding live, I would not feed live, as I have some nice critters in my collection, and I wouldn't put them at risk, if I believed it to be true. My personal experience demonstrates otherwise.
My hatchlings are started on rat fuzzies, and moved up rather quickly to rat pups, then small rats.
Congrats on your ball python - we need pictures though!
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The Following 2 Users Say Thank You to rabernet For This Useful Post:
AK907 (10-09-2011),angllady2 (10-09-2011)
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